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User Name cavenewt
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Total number of Feedback Posts: 10
Total number of comments: 8
Last 10 Feedback Posts by cavenewt [ Search for All ]
SpaceControl 1.0.3 (Mac OS X)
A godsend for consultants and support folks 
Finally, I can get an email notification when clients' hard drives are too full. Or at least have something pop up in the client's face telling them something is wrong! Plus it's great not to have to pull down a menu to see what the situation is--the space is right there in the menubar. Since I started using Space Control, nobody's drive has filled up, so I don't feel qualified to rate Quality/Stability. But I like it so far. Only caveat is: when configuring for smtp, my password is saved in the clear. Not good. So it severely limits what systems I can set this up on at the moment (just desktops that don't travel, so the smtp server can be the ISP.) I would really really like this one thing to be fixed. I would also like to be able to get notifications on non-boot drives. This would be useful for backups that need pruning occasionally. Carbon Copy Cloner, which I like, does not do email notifications on failure, such as one caused by No Space Left On Device. Another suggestion: It's helpful that the setup includes suggestions for minimum free space, which, traditionally, have been 10-20% of the drive capacity. However, a recent macintouch.com discussion proposed 10x your RAM (has to do with swap space, I think), and more if you use something like Photoshop that needs scratch. Perhaps the suggestions could be updated, if this RAM angle is accurate. Thanks for a very useful utility! [alert admin]
Saturday, August 29 2009 @ 06:01 PM PDT
SMART Utility 2.0 (Mac OS X)
As a Mac support person, I have found SMART Utility invaluable to give me advance warning of drive failure. I used to have to run TechTool Pro's Surface Scan to confirm bad blocks on a drive; or, on some drive models, Disk Warrior's entries in the System Log reveal replaced blocks. Either way, it took a lot of disk activity on a possibly-failing drive that could prevent timely data salvage. SU will tell you immediately if any blocks (sectors) have been replaced, which is almost always a sign of a failing drive. I deal with several failed drives per week, and at least half of them are due to bad blocks. SU's other attribute reports will also warn of impending failure due to other causes. Note that Disk Utility's Smart Status will typically only tell you a drive is failing after it's already gone belly-up. Thank you, Doctor, I could have figured out for myself that the patient had expired. Some feedback posts have complained that SU is just a GUI for smartmontools. While it is that, it is more also. First, for those of us who don't know how to make smartmontools work, there's nothing wrong with a GUI; those of you who want to remain pure and unsullied by GUIs can do so. Second, SU doesn't just report attribute failures, but has an algorithm that gives you advance warning ("Failing") and the red "Failed" alert, so you don't have to be intimately familiar with SMART attributes and which ones are important and what values are normal and abnormal. SMART reporting does not work over most Firewire and USB connections. That's not the fault of the software, it's a function of the external enclosure. The only features I would like to see added are email notification and a menubar icon. I have suggested this to the author, who is very responsive to questions. [alert admin]
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Saturday, March 14 2009 @ 03:15 PM PDT
Print Window 4.0 (Mac OS X)
I couldn't get PW to do anything at all. A quick trip to the developer's FAQ solved it (turn off the preference to remember Page Setup settings temporarily.) They're working on fixing it for the next release. I'm just glad to be able to print file listings, which has been missing ever since OS 9. [alert admin]
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Sunday, February 24 2008 @ 12:39 PM PST
HotApp 1.9.2u (Mac OS X)
I wrote the developer, and got this reply: "we're still here... but we're busy doing a lot of consulting work and so spend less time updating the site... HotApp is compatible with 10.5 :-)" [alert admin]
Sunday, December 16 2007 @ 06:26 AM PST
HotApp 1.9.2u (Mac OS X)
Trufsoft seems to have gone away...say it ain't so!
I just checked trufsoft.com to see if there's an update for HotApp. While the site is still there, a lot of the links go nowhere and the forums appear to be inoperative, and the last post was January 2007. Please, somebody, tell me I'm wrong! Is there any other app out there that does what HotApp does, without all the fuss of QuicKeys, and the unsatisfactoriness of the Finder's built-in function key support? [alert admin]
Friday, December 07 2007 @ 08:35 AM PST
HotApp 1.9.2u (Mac OS X)
I've use HotApp for years and find it indispensable; I'm glad Trufsoft has avoided QuickKeys-like bloat. I second the motion to be able to sort on the columns in the HotApp pane. I do find that every time I upgrade to a different hard drive I have to re-apply most or all hotkeys, which is not a big deal. And I would appreciate more information on Dynamic Paste; I want to create my own. It looks like you should be able to, but I can't figure it out. Gues I'll have to write to TrufSoft--they have a user forum but there's not much activity. [alert admin]
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Monday, August 28 2006 @ 07:30 AM PDT
DriveGauge 3.2 (Mac OS X)
As a Mac consultant, I see way too many computers (especially laptops) whose hard drives are maxed out with music and pictures, sometimes causing data loss. Till Apple builds something into the operating system to warn users about low storage levels, this is a good choice. I've had it on an iMac G5 running Tiger for a few months now with no ill effects and am planning to make the optional $5 donation. I do not understand why there are no other recent feedback posts here. The complaints all apply to older versions of DriveGauge. As to features, personally I don't care about all the cosmetic tweaks provided--just a basic visual gauge is all I need so I stuck with the default icon and settings. [alert admin]
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Friday, June 30 2006 @ 07:12 AM PDT
Guest PC 1.4 (Mac OS X)
I have a client who needs Skype's group messaging, which is not supported in the Mac version (promised sometime in the future, though.) Can anybody tell me if Guest PC works well with the Windows 1.2 version of Skype? I sure wish there was an evaluation version of Guest PC available! [alert admin]
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Sunday, May 29 2005 @ 01:40 PM PDT
()
I just downloaded this and it opened fine in Panther (10.3.2); typed some text, saved it, no problem. [alert admin]
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Wednesday, March 17 2004 @ 08:03 AM PST
Last 10 Comments by cavenewt [ Search for All ]
Smart Utility has challenged you to a duel...somewhat
As a Mac consultant, I like SmartReporter's emailing function. However, I don't think its predictive capability is anywhere near SMART Utility's. I've had SU warn me of numerous drives that were starting to suffer from bad blocks, where Disk Utility and, presumably Smart Reporter, don't give any hint till the spare blocks have been exhausted. And 80-90% of the drive failures I deal with are due to bad blocks.
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Sunday, May 17 2009 @ 09:21 AM PDT
p.s. I also use SMART Reporter, but like Disk Utility, SMART Reporter doesn't alert you to a disk failure till it's usually too late to do much about it. SMART Utility gives a much better advance warning.
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Saturday, March 14 2009 @ 03:18 PM PDT
SmartReporter does the job for free
As a professional Mac consultant, I swear by SmartUtility. It has forewarned me of drive failures (which had not failed the standard SMART yet) so I could take preventive action before disaster struck. In the instances where I put the drives back into service, even after a Write All Zeroes reformat, they still failed, and frequently enough so that I now trust SmartUtility when it says a drive is Failing. SmartReporter is useful for everyday users,…
Original feedback item : Read More(1 words)
Thursday, October 09 2008 @ 10:36 AM PDT
the developer just replied to me, and says it is Leopard compatible.
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Sunday, December 16 2007 @ 06:24 AM PST
You're trying to use it on an Intel Mac, but it doesn't list Intel Macs as being supported.
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Sunday, May 20 2007 @ 07:43 AM PDT
Just figured out Dynamic Paste answer
To add your own Dynamic Paste item: first click the Add button which will duplicate the last item in the list. Then edit it by double-clicking and typing your desired entry. After you hit Enter or Return, HotApp will create the example field on its own.
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Monday, August 28 2006 @ 07:54 AM PDT
Problems with the right side of the menubar can sometimes be fixed by deleting a pref file. It's in [your home]/Library/Preferences and the file to delete is com.apple.systemuiserver.plist.
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Thursday, January 12 2006 @ 06:42 AM PST
WHy bother? Prevent unwanted disk write
Here's a good reason to Why Bother: If you want to plug in a Firewire drive to, say, run Data Rescue to look for accidentally deleted files, you need to prevent indexing BEFORE the drive is available in the privacy tab of Spotlight. If you want to recover files, you don't want anything written to the drive, because the lost files might get overwritten. Or maybe you just don't want Spotlight to index a drive that's…
Original feedback item : Read More(1 words)
Saturday, August 13 2005 @ 02:46 PM PDT
